13 Free Google Analytics Tools To Use Everyday

I was having one of my infrequent spates of (spring) cleaning, going through analytics accounts tidying up stray Views and updating IP exclusions as you do, when it occurred to me that I have amassed quite a library of resources that pretty regularly help my analysis.

Google Analytics has become a ‘heads up’ of sorts, giving me a nudge to get to the bottom of any anomaly and as a result it is the first thing I open each morning. Such is its importance to me now, it is now my ‘go to’ if I need to get a feel for a multitude of digital marketing elements be it SEO indicators, sales performance or site health.

So in this post I’m going to share dashboards, custom reports and advanced segments to help you beef up your site analysis. These are by no means the be all and end all, simply what I’ve built up over time and use reasonably frequently. In the main they have come from 3 main sources:

Paid Search

From one of the Google Analytics team, this report summarises the key AdWords metrics nicely, allowing you to understand the big picture (but bear in mind the difference in click attribution AdWords and Analytics use).

These nifty Advanced Segments, again from the Google Analytics Solutions library, add a useful means of analysing paid search by separating out your top performers by Top Slot and Right Hand positions This is an excellent way to clarify if you need to be paying top dollar for ad position or if you simply just need to be seen.

SEO

To get started looking at what organic traffic is giving your site, this overview Dashboard originally shared by Anna Lewis, will give you an organic view of sources, landing pages, cities and even a smidge of keyword data whilst it still exists.

Customreportsharing.com is an excellent resource if you’re looking to augment your analytics resources. I particularly like this custom report as it’s useful for analysing the value your content marketing efforts are contributing.

Dashboardjunkie.com has a wealth of useful stuff and one of my favourites is this ecommerce Dashboard that zero’s in on what is being delivered by your SEO efforts. It gives you visit data, source and keyword analysis and combines this with revenue data.

Keyword Analysis

So unless 1 Rock, Rock Street is where you’ve been living for the past few months, you’ll be well aware of Google moving to 100% secure search and the taking away of OUR keyword data. Ok, rant over.

Dan Barker, like many saw this coming and pushed live http://notprovidedkit.com/ more or less as soon as the pixel ink had dried on the announcement from Google. Dan’s kit of GA add ons covers Dashboards, Custom Reports and Advanced Segments to help you analyse what data you have left as well as crack a bit of something useful out of (not provided).

Get yourself over to Notprovidedkit.com and stuff your Google Analytics account with lots of goodies.

Technical SEO

For an overview on a site’s performance this Dashboard provides a useful top level view of any site that can help you narrow down which factors need improving. From Customreportsharing.com, this Dashboard looks at page load time and how it is impacted by various factors from browser to location.

Dashboardjunkie.com has two excellent Dashboards that drill down to some insightful user data. One at looks at basic facts about your site visitors such as; location and technology (ie; browser, screen resolution and device type).

Social Media

Everybody’s favourite buzzword and a bit of a nightmare to attribute value to. Each organisation will have its own expectation of the role Social Media should play and this custom report from Dashboardjunkie.com will give you the following top line insights:

• When to use your Social profiles • How each profile works for you • What content is social

So that is a grand total of 13 Google Analytics add ons to help you identify factors that can help improve your web analytics efforts. There are countless others so let me know what you like to use and if there are any that you may have designed that are worth covering.

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With five years background in Travel, Graeme has built up strong commercial experience alongside online and offline marketing skills working with a variety of Travel Agents and Cruise Specialists. A passionate advocate of SEO and Social Media, Graeme has a strong interest in ROI and analytics in order to deliver the best level of returns.

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